The problems kicked off this morning when Amazon started sending emails to select Kindle owners, alerting them to a free trial of “The Kindle Compass.”

In the email, Amazon failed to explain what “The Kindle Compass” was, and worse, implied that customers would be charged for it going forward.

An Amazon spokesperson said a second letter has been sent this evening, explaining that “The Kindle Compass” is a pilot project, and apologizing for any confusion over the price. “We built it to always be free for customers, and you will never be charged for it,” the company told its customers.

Still, the response comes hours after much of the damage had already been done.

Angry customers flooded Kindle forums, posting more than 100 complaints to topics called “Where is Kindle Compass Magazine?” and “Auto-Subscription to the Kindle Compass??”

The confusion was understandable.

In the original message, Amazon misled consumers about the terms: “If you enjoy your free trial, do nothing and your subscription will automatically continue at the monthly subscription rate.”

However, no rate was ever mentioned.

Even worse, those who contacted Amazon customer service said the reps weren’t familiar with the publication, so the best they could do was help them to unsubscribe to ensure they would not be charged. At this point, people are still confused as to what “The Kindle Compass” is all about.

A spokesperson did not return emails asking for more clarity on what the publication is, and it’s unclear how many customers were affected (not all Kindle owners received the email).

In the forums, the complaints centered on two concerns: That Amazon would sign them up for something they did not knowingly subscribe to, and that they may be charged for it.

One consumer, who used the name “Susabelle”, wrote: “I am absolutely APPALLED. Amazon, you should be completely ashamed of yourself!! An auto-subscription to a publication I’ve NEVER heard of, that you will be auto-billing me for after 14 days? HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND??”

Here is the apology Amazon sent to consumers this evening:

This morning we sent you an email regarding The Kindle Compass, a new free publication built by the Kindle editorial team that we’re piloting to a small number of Kindle customers.

This email incorrectly referred to The Kindle Compass as a subscription with a free trial. We built it to always be free for customers, and you will never be charged for it. We apologize for any confusion.

If you wish to unsubscribe from the pilot for The Kindle Compass you can do so from a link in the last section of the magazine, or from the Manage Your Kindle Subscriptions page at www.amazon.com/manageyourkindlesubscriptions.

The new multiplayer online game has gotten off to a strong start, but has a long way to go if it plans to challenge the fan base World of Warcraft has amassed over the last six years.

So far, Electronic Arts has confirmed that Star Wars: The Old Republic has registered more than one million players since officially launching on Dec. 20. In that time, those players have created 1.66 million characters and logged more than 60 million hours of game play, which is roughly the equivalent of watching all six Star Wars movies more than four million times.

It’s a good beginning, but the game has a lot riding on it.

Star Wars: The Old Republic, which was developed by Electronic Arts-owned BioWare, cost hundreds of millions to build and took several years to develop.

The critical question is whether it has enough star power to attract players away from other titles, namely World of Warcraft, which has built a dedicated subscription base.

Today, World of Warcraft has about 10.3 million subscribers, and a year ago it was able to sell 3.3 million copies of its latest expansion pack in the first day of it being available. A fourth expansion pack, adding even more content, is expected in the near future but currently has no launch date.

Still, some analysts believe a takeover by Star Wars is possible.

Last month, Activision Blizzard said its membership base fell nearly 10 percent to 10.3 million, down from 11.4 million in March. Each subscriber represents a massive recurring revenue stream of roughly $15 a month, so that’s a tough loss to swallow.

The games in this category are not found on Facebook and they are definitely not free.

They are deep, story-telling experiences with high-end graphics that players pay a lot for. Star Wars is charging $60 for the initial software download, plus one free month. From there, it will cost the players an additional $15 a month for access, which is on par with others.

Last month, Lazard Capital Markets’ Atul Bagga downgraded Activision from “buy” to “neutral” after hearing about the drop in subscribers and after getting the results of a survey that polled 381 online gamers.

The study, which was conducted by Lazard in conjunction with Peanut Labs, found that Star Wars may benefit as World of Warcraft gets older, reports GameSpot.com.

Of those who are currently playing World of Warcraft, 50 percent of respondents said they plan to buy The Old Republic, and 95 percent of the survey’s respondents who were also participating in the Star Wars beta said they would buy the game.

Today, Electronic Arts is trading higher, up 1.8 percent, or about 37 cents, to $21.08 a share. Activision, which is also being supported by the strong launch of Call of Duty, is down about 3 cents to $12.17 a share.

The game is long overdue and over budget, but now that it is actually here, the LucasArts-blessed project is likely to become one of the company’s most significant game launches over the next decade.

The Star Wars title falls into the category of a massively mutliplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), a subscription game that people can escape into for hours, acting out the role of characters and interacting with others inside a virtual world.

Other games in the genre have done extremely well, including Activision Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, which has more than 10 million subscribers after more than six years in existence.

In an interview, Frank Gibeau, president of EA Labels, told All Things D, “This is our most ambitious game of my career, and the biggest project ever made at Electronic Arts.”

The project started as early as 2007, when BioWare received the license from LucasArts. Electronic Arts acquired BioWare in 2008.

The game is on a completely different scale than a social game, and is closer to premium titles found on videogame consoles. But really, a better standard of comparison would be a blockbuster movie production.

“If a social game is a speedboat, this is like a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier,” Gibeau said.

There are at least 300 hours of game play possible within Star Wars: The Old Republic. EA hired 1,000 actors to perform 250,000 lines of dialogue — more than in all six “Star Wars” movies combined. The game is produced in English, French and German.

“It’s the most voiced-entertainment property in history — film, book, anything,” said Gibeau. “We are thinking of this game in terms of a 10-year life cycle.”

One of BioWare’s co-founders, Ray Muzyka, has been working on the project nonstop for the past several years. He told me that, despite having plenty of access to the game, “I still want to play it. I still haven’t scratched the surface, and it’s still compelling.”

Star Wars: The Old Republic officially launched at midnight, but has been slowly adding 200,000 players a day over the past week, to ensure that the servers were ready to handle the crush. Gibeau said that by today there will already be around 1.5 million people playing in the game.

The game costs $60 for a digital download or physical copy. The first month is free; it costs $15 a month after that.

One of the key differences between Star Wars and other MMO-style games is the voiceover, Gibeau said. Most MMOs require the player to read a lot of text in order to receive instructions on what to do next. BioWare lets the characters do the talking to make the players feel a part of the game.

“That’s the biggest overall thing we brought to the genre,” BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk said in an interview. “It’s an approachable story with real living and breathing characters who get to choose their own outcome. It creates a way to be attached to the game.”

“It grows on you over time,” Muzyka added. “Once you’ve played The Old Republic, you can’t go back (to other MMOs). It’s woven into the experience. That emotional engagement is very natural. … They feel alive. They feel like they are helping someone, or your alliance, or your village. You can be a hero or a villain.”

Electronic Arts is reluctant to say that it is betting the farm on the game, when it has so many other franchises and big projects in the works. But the potential for profit is an open question.

The release of Star Wars: The Old Republic will automatically draw in players because of the movie franchise’s mass-market appeal. Who doesn’t want to play the role of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia or Darth Vader? (Except that those three names are banned in game play, since everyone can’t walk around the Republic with the same name, duh.).

Of course, EA will have to pay LucasArts handsomely for the right to use a big brand name like Star Wars. There’s no secret why other social games are generic — it’s cheaper. There are also hundreds of millions in development costs that Electronic Arts will have to recoup.

And those costs don’t stop on launch day.

EA and BioWare are already developing more content for the game, and have hired a team of customer-service reps in Ireland to take calls from players.

Gibeau defines what he would consider a successful game: “It’s certainly not a make-or-break product for our company,” he said. “Star Wars is a really important part, but it’s in the context of the larger digital transformation. I’d love to have a business that lasts for 10 years; I’d love to have millions of subscribers and a huge hit from that standpoint,” he said. “But our conservative cases are much less than that, so we are in pretty good shape from any outcome.”

Muzyka is a big poker player, so I asked how he is betting the game will do.

“I like to bet on things that win, and I think it’s going to win big,” he said.

To set the scene, the game takes place thousands of years before the rise of Darth Vader, when war between the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire was dividing the galaxy. Players choose to play as a Jedi, a Sith, or a variety of other roles.

Watch this trailer and judge for yourself whether the game experience is as realistic as its creators claim:

Here’s what the music service is likely to announce: The ability to let third-party developers tap into Spotify’s music library and make it available to their own users — as long as those users are already paying Spotify for a premium account.

That’s what Spotify has been discussing with developers for much of this fall. My educated guess is that the company intends to unveil its plans at its Wednesday event in New York. Evolver.fm’s Eliot Van Buskirk reached the same conclusion last week.

Spotify reps won’t comment, and I’ve yet to find a developer who says they’re working with Spotify on the new project. And developers working on some music-based apps that would be logical candidates for a Spotify tie-up tell me they’re not helping the service launch its expanded API (application programming interface).

Want more hedges? No problem: There’s an open question about whether Spotify would need to seek permission from the big music labels and publishers to open up its catalog to outsiders, or whether their existing deals will suffice. As you may recall, the last time Spotify needed permission from the labels — when it wanted to open up in the U.S. — the process took more than two years. (Shudder).

But at least some industry sources think that this is doable, and say that both Spotify and the labels envision the expanded APIs as the music industry’s version of “authentication,” or “TV Everywhere” — the TV industry plan that gives cable TV subscribers the ability to watch (some) programming on the Web or on iPad apps.

Call it “Music Everywhere.”

At least some of the big labels are “philosophically aligned with the idea of using Spotify as an ‘authentication layer,’” says an industry executive. “They see this as a value-add and they’re not worried about cannibalization.”

From a behind-the-scenes business perspective, that attitude itself is newsworthy, because the labels have for some time had a hard time figuring out just what to make of Spotify.

And I can imagine why Spotify thinks an API expansion is a big deal. “Spotify everywhere” makes the service that much stickier and useful, and it gives more users incentive to upgrade from their free accounts to paid subscriptions.

Linking up with lots of developers and services could also loosen Spotify’s dependence on Facebook, which wouldn’t be the worst idea. Facebook is currently generating a fire hose of traffic and users for Spotify via its new layout, and so far that’s been great for Daniel Ek’s company. So is the fact the services share backers, advisers and a similar view of the world. But having sources of traffic and users from places other than Mark Zuckerberg would be a healthy idea in the long run.

And for you, the average Spotify user? This won’t be nearly so meaningful.

Spotify just announced that it has 2.5 million paying subscribers, which makes it the largest Web music subscription service, by a wide margin. But the overwhelming percentage of Spotify’s users aren’t paying for the service, which would mean they won’t be able to access it from outside services.

So maybe “new direction” is an oversell. Perhaps Spotify felt it needed to say something big after Apple launched its iTunes Match service and Google rolled out its long-awaited music launch. “New options, for some” might do it. We’ll find out Wednesday.

I can’t report that it does. I spent several hours futzing with the service last night, and found it balky. But I’m guessing that, just like its iCloud launch last month, Apple will work out many of the kinks over the next couple days.

In the meantime, sometimes iTunes Match did what it was supposed to do: It moved my songs — whether I bought them from Apple, acquired them legally somewhere else or flat-out stole them — from my computers to Apple’s servers. Then it let me move the files back down again to my iPhone and other machines.

That’s useful for me, and worth the $25 annual charge. But it’s great for Apple.

Because now my computer, my phone and several other devices are even more closely bound by iTunes than they were before. And it’s happening just as rival cloud services are trying to bust up Apple’s hold on my media.

Tomorrow, for instance, Google is set to finally unveil its Google Music service, which is supposed to combine a cloud/locker offering with the ability to share songs with friends who also use the service. Yesterday, Amazon started shipping its Kindle Fire tablet, which is both a media consumption device and a media obtainment device — designed to get me to buy more media from Amazon.

Meanwhile, Spotify has been pushing me — with an insistent assist from Facebook — to use its music service for free, with the hope that I’ll become so deeply enmeshed that I end up paying $10 a month for a premium account.

None of these rival services preclude me from using Apple and iTunes. In fact all of them will work, at least initially, with iTunes songs (video will be another story). And it’s possible for me to maintain parallel cloud systems if I really want to. I could use Spotify as a discovery tool, for instance, and iTunes as my gotta-have-it archive. But I’ve got limited time and attention, so the reality is that I’m going to end up picking one cloud and sticking with it.

I’ve been working with iTunes since 2001, so Tim Cook already has a very long lead — long enough that he can get away with charging me $25 a year to make it even harder for me to leave. The new guys are going to have work very hard to pull me away.

[Image via: instruct9r/Shutterstock]

Bingo! Your service gets a lot more users.

We’ve seen and heard this story several times since Facebook’s most recent redesign, launched in September, which autoshares what users are reading, watching and hearing.

So services that are hooked into Facebook’s new “ticker” are seeing an influx of traffic — the same way you’d get traffic if you put up lots and lots of signs on a highway used by a half billion people per day.

Still, it continues to bear repeating, and it turns out that music subscription service MOG wants to share.

Here’s the growth for monthly active users plugged into MOG via Facebook, plotted by Inside Network’s AppData Facebook tracking service. The Facebook redesign kicked in just about a month ago, and sure enough, so did MOG’s traffic. It’s now at 160,000 monthly users, up 4x:

So that’s good, right? “This is the best distribution platform we’ve ever had,” says MOG CEO David Hyman.

He projects that if these growth rates continue, his service will have racked up 2.1 million monthly users by the end of the year. For context, Spotify, Facebook’s first among equals when it comes to music service partners, is on an even faster tear, with much bigger numbers. It already has 7.1 million monthly active users via Facebook, up from 1.1 million pre-Facebook redesign.

This is precisely what MOG was hoping would happen when it overhauled itself to offer free music to new users without requiring a credit card or any other commitment. (Competitor Rdio made a similar move, as did Spotify).

What we don’t know is how many of them will stick around. It’s entirely possible that MOG’s graph could trend down again, like it did in mid-October.

And what we really don’t know is how many of these new prospects will eventually start paying a monthly fee for access to features like mobile music. All of that free music costs MOG and its peers quite a bit, and they need to convert a minority of their users to make the model work.

There’s also a flip side to the redesign story, where some big Web sites/services that had counted on Facebook for traffic saw it drop dramatically after the overhaul. This week I chatted with a publisher who saw Facebook referrals drop by more than a third after the redesign, due to changes in the way the service surfaces shared stories from users’ friends.

That drop is similar to the effect some publishers noted after Google’s “Panda” overhaul. But the publisher I talked to this week says their sites at least were able to claw back much of that referral traffic by manually tweaking their sharing mechanisms.

But now we’ll get Reed Hastings’s own report card, when Netflix announces its quarterly earnings this afternoon.

As Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney notes, the key numbers to look for aren’t the Q3 metrics — the company has already preannounced that its subscriber numbers are going to be lower than it initially thought — but its guidance for the rest of the year.

That’s where we’ll be able to see the impact of its many stumbles — the price hike, the broken Starz deal, Qwikster’s New Coke moment — or at least what Netflix thinks the impact will be. If Netflix subscribers are really bailing out — and not just threatening to do so on Hastings’s Facebook page — you should be able to see that reflected in its expectations for the next three months.

Remember that shortly after Netflix dropped its first bomb this summer — a 60 percent price hike for many of its customers — management predicted that it would suffer a subscriber blip in Q3, but would recover by Q4. Let’s see if they’ve hung on to that confidence.

Here are Mahaney’s best guesses for Netflix’s Q3 results and Q4 guidance, along with Wall Street’s estimates (click image to enlarge). I’ll be covering the results live at 4 pm ET.

The video below gives you the gist: You can control some of this directly on your Xbox via voice control, motion control and a Windows smartphone. Again, the key point here is that you won’t get any of this stuff on your machine unless you’re already paying for it through a cable subscription.

This is incremental stuff but it’s still interesting. A source who’s played with the new service says it’s genuinely cool. Just as important, given that Microsoft has sold some 50 million compatible machines, it has (potential) leverage to do some really interesting stuff.

This is where Google TV would like to be, and it’s why Google is out pitching content guys for a relaunch this fall.

But the network doesn’t always want to play hard to get. Right now, you can go to iTunes and watch an episode of “New Girl,” a show so new it hasn’t appeared on Fox at all yet.

Fox started giving away free downloads of the Zooey Deschanel sitcom via Apple’s store this morning; next week, it will start promoting the show on Hulu, Fox.com and other sites. All of the free views will disappear before the show’s debut on Sept. 28.

After that, the show will be tucked back into Fox’s new eight-day “window,” which will make the show harder to watch on the Web, unless you’re a subscriber to either the Dish Network or Hulu Plus. (Here we’ll note that News Corp. owns Fox, and part of Hulu, and this Web site, too).

As Variety notes, TV networks have been handing out freebies on iTunes for years, but the trade journal thinks this is only the second time a U.S. broadcaster has done it. That’s worth noting, because the broadcasters have to worry about appeasing powerful local affiliates, who worry that free Web views equal small audiences for them and their local advertisers.

The other issue with the strategy: Last year, when Fox tried it for the first time, it didn’t work at all. Fox aired two episodes of “Lone Star” before it pulled the plug.

Here’s the first sneak peak Fox offered for “New Girl,” back in May, when it unveiled the show for advertisers.

The move comes two months after Apple instituted new rules that required developers either to sell subscriptions through iTunes or take down any e-commerce links to outside sites.

The FT, which had been vocal about its opposition to the rules, did neither, and now its apps are gone, though for the present existing downloads will still work.

“We removed the app after amicable discussions with Apple,” says FT spokesman Tom Glover. “ITunes will remain an important channel for new and existing advertising-based apps.”

That makes the financial newspaper the only big player to date to pull a big app out of Apple’s store altogether. Other content companies have either signed on for Apple’s subscription service (the New York Times, Conde Nast) or dropped the links in their apps (Amazon, Hulu, and The Wall Street Journal, which, like this site, is owned by News Corp.).

The FT is directing users to its Web-based app, which it introduced earlier this year amid a back and forth with Apple over the new subscription rules. Glover says the Web app now has 550,000 users, a number he says “has overtaken users on our native Apple iOS apps combined, and it’s now delivering the largest share of subscriptions from our mobile channels.”

Short version: A few prominent players have accepted Apple’s terms and will be giving Steve Jobs a big chunk of their subscription revenue.

Many more are sticking around the App Store, but removing any kind of e-commerce link from their apps. This makes their apps less useful, but at least it doesn’t cost them any money.

And a third group is trying an end run by building their own Web apps that will work on Apple devices without requiring the company’s approval.

Some examples from each category:

Play along, eat the tax: Some big print publishers, including the New York Times, Condé Nast and Hearst, are working with the new rules.

That means that they’ll hand over 30 percent of the subscription revenue they generate via iOS apps every month, and that they won’t have access to as much consumer data as they’d get if they sold the subscriptions on their own. But they’ll put up with it in order to reach the 225 million iTunes accounts Apple controls.

(Variation on the theme — play along, pass the tax along to consumers: Music subscription service Rdio is accepting Apple’s tax as well. But to protect its margins it is raising the price for subscriptions sold through iOS devices, from $10 to $15. After Apple gets its 30 percent cut, Rdio will end up with the same $10 it would have had before the new rules.)

Stay in iTunes, but grudgingly: This is the “better than nothing” approach. Services like Netflix, Hulu, Rhapsody, Spotify, and publishers like Time Inc. and The Wall Street Journal (which, like this Web site, is owned by News Corp) are keeping their apps in iTunes. But rather than hand over cash and lose access to customer data, they won’t sell any subscriptions through their iTunes apps.

And at Apple’s insistence, they are stripping out any links that send customers to the companies’ home Web sites. This even applies to services that aren’t selling subscriptions at all, but are offering access to content as part of other subscription services. See, for example, ESPN’s WatchESPN app, which tells users that they have to visit an ESPN Web site to sign up for the service, which is free for certain cable company customers. But the app doesn’t offer a live link to the site, just an address.

End run: The Financial Times was the first big media company to build a Web site that mimics an app but works on Apple’s Safari browser, as a way of working around Apple’s restrictions while reaching Apple’s customers. Now Amazon has followed suit, as has Wal-Mart’s Vudu video service.

Note that both the FT and Amazon continue to keep their old apps in iTunes; they’ve just neutered them. You can still read Kindle titles you bought on Amazon’s iOS app, for instance — you just can’t press a button that will take you directly to Amazon’s Web site to buy a new one.

So what does all of that tell us about the App Store ecosystem and how developers will fare in and out of it?

Not much. It’s pretty early. We might have a better idea in a few months when some publicly traded companies like the Times may end up talking about their Apple relationship during earnings calls. (Admittedly, that’s a stretch of a hope: Apple has a way of getting most of its partners to STFU.)

That said, here’s a not-very-out-on-a-limb prediction: Companies who already have lots of customers and are already in frequent communication with them, like Amazon, should do fine outside of the store.

And companies that have lots of potential customers but little traction, like Vudu, will likely struggle. Particularly since that company sells the same thing — video-on-demand rentals and sales — that Apple already sells through iTunes.

At least as important: Spotify now has 175,000 paying U.S. subscribers, less than a month after it finally opened its doors in America, says the same source. Last week Billboard cited a source who pegged Spotify’s U.S. user total at “at least one million.”

That’s a conversion rate — crucial to both Spotify’s business plans and to the big music labels — of 12.5 percent. Not quite as good as the 15 percent rate that Spotify reported in its home base of Europe last spring.

On the other hand, Amercian users have less incentive to pay for Spotify than Europeans do — during the company’s six-month launch phase, the U.S. version of the free service gives users more music than the European one does. The main reason to upgrade to paid is to get access on iPhones and Android handsets, for $10 a month.

In any case, it’s still hard to gauge what the numbers mean — it’s very early, and there has been a lot of hype.

Still, for context: Spotify reports that it has 1.6 million paid subscribers in Europe. And last month Rhapsody, the biggest digital music subscription service in the U.S., said it had 800,000 paid subscribers. (Sirius XM has 21 million subscribers, but the satellite radio service isn’t an apples-to-apples analog with Spotify et al; closer to a pear.)

Meanwhile, Rdio, a U.S.-based Spotify competitor hoping to capitalize on Spotify’s wave of publicity — or at least not get drowned by it — has made an interesting move: It is going to continue marketing its service via Apple’s iTunes, while raising its prices — for customers who sign up via its mobile apps — from $10 to $15 a month in order to comply with Apple’s new subscription rules and fees.

Most other subscription services — including Spotify and Rhapsody — have gone the other route, by taking down subscription links from their Apple apps, but keeping their pricing intact.

The program, called EA Sports Season Ticket, had been expected for some time, but the company is officially announcing the details today.

For $25 a year, sports fans will be able to download complete versions of Madden NFL Football, NHL Hockey, FIFA Soccer, Tiger Woods PGA Tour and NCAA Football to their consoles and play them for three days until the game is on sale.

At that point, the users will have to pay full retail to continue playing the games, but will be able to continue their achievements in the game.

Other perks will include 20 percent discounts on downloadable extras, including accelerator packs and gear upgrades; free online content, such as the ability to create special teams for FIFA Soccer 12 (normally about $5); and membership recognition through recognition badges.

The subscription service, the first of its kind for Electronic Arts, will result in savings for hardcore players, but at the end of the day it is about giving players early access to the games.

“This is pretty groundbreaking,” said Peter Moore, the president of EA Sports. “We’ve been working on it for over a year now and we are finally ready.”

Market research revealed that far and away the thing people wanted most was early access and to “look at the game prior to the general population, and start getting the controls down,” Moore said. “It’s like they get to training camp three days early.”

EA Sports Season Ticket, which will be available on Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation, will kick off on Aug. 30 with the release of Madden.

The one hitch about this program is that EA will have to ensure that the three days of free access will talk the players into buying the game — not out of it.

That’s one of the takeaways from a new Nielsen report about viewing habits on the two online video services. Just three percent of Netflix users say they watch the service on a mobile phone or an iPad (Netflix on Android tablets has just barely moved beyond the theoretical stage). Hulu’s numbers are even smaller.

That’s not a huge surprise for a couple reasons:

• Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has downplayed the effect that mobile phones and the iPad have had on his business. What’s most important to his company, he’s said, are ways that his customers can get their video onto TVs, whether it’s via game consoles like Microsoft’s Xbox 360 or via Internet-connected TVs.
• Meanwhile, the only way Hulu users can watch on a phone or an iPad is by paying for the Hulu Plus subscription service. And while that service may have a million or so customers, that’s a small fraction of the free site’s overall user base. (Nielsen says it didn’t distinguish between free and paid Hulu users in its most recent survey).

Still, the data is worth pointing out, as video makers and distributors are trying to get their heads around the way people consume their stuff on the go. Of course, even “on the go” can mean different things to different users — yesterday we noted that much of a music video site’s “mobile” usage was actually taking place in bedrooms and living rooms.

Nielsen also reports, not surprisingly, that Hulu viewers are primarily using the service to watch TV shows. And that while Netflix users watch more movies than TV shows, they’re watching a lot of both. That also makes sense, given the increasing importance that Netflix has placed on getting its hands on shows like “Mad Men.”

That disclosure sent the company’s stock tumbling nearly 10 percent after the market closed. But Reed Hastings and company don’t seem to be sweating.

The real surprise, they say, is that Netflix customers aren’t more upset.

“Believe it or not, the noise level was actually less than we expected, given a 60 percent price increase for some subscribers,” Hastings said on yesterday’s earnings call, answering a question about the outpouring of outrage on the Web. “We knew what we were getting into, we tried to be as straightforward as we could, and that has worked out very well for us.”

What Hastings isn’t saying out loud, but is saying via the financial guidance the company is offering: Chill out. Relax. We know what we’re doing.

Netflix told Wall Street that it expects to see as much as $829 million in revenue next quarter. But as Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney notes, the relatively modest subscriber projections Netflix is offering for the end of Q3 — 25 million in the U.S., 15 million of them still using DVDs — puts the company on track to do a $1 billion quarter. Which is what it suggests it will do in Q4, for the first time in its history.

Essentially, Hastings is betting that subscriber growth returns to normal levels in Q4 — whoever is really dissatisfied with the pricing will have already bailed, while new customers won’t notice the change. And then he’ll see a real benefit from the price hike, which will affect the majority of his customers — DVD use has peaked, the company says, but it’s not going away overnight.

It seems to me that the real risk for Hastings isn’t consumer reaction to his price increase, which he can probably forecast fairly effectively. Netflix prides itself on the deep data insights it can mine from its customers.

What he can’t predict is the way the Hollywood studios will behave as he attempts to license new content for his streaming service and renegotiate his Starz deal, which expires early next year. If those deals aren’t successful and Hastings can’t grow his catalog of movies and TV shows, then the price he’s offering won’t matter that much.

The weekly is rolling out an “all-access” plan that kicks in Thursday. It will give readers a chance to purchase bundles that will give them access to the magazine in multiple formats: Print editions delivered to their mailboxes, app versions beamed to their iPads and other tablets, and Web versions at Time.com.

This is the second time Time Inc., Time Warner’s publishing unit, has rolled out a print/digital bundle. Earlier this year it announced a similar “magazines everywhere” package for Sports Illustrated.

You can read pricing details in the press release below. What you won’t see there: News that, along with the bundles, the magazine will put up a paywall on its site which will keep non-subscribers from reading the print version for three months after it hits the newsstand.

If that sounds familiar, there’s a reason. Time.com put up a wall for its print magazine content almost exactly a year ago, and said at that time it would be doing that for most of its titles.

It’s unclear to me when and why the title knocked down its Web barriers — right now, for instance, you can read all of Time’s most recent issue for free — but they are going back up this week, and some Time staffers I’ve heard from are grumbling about the move. But as I’ve said before, it’s likely that the vast majority of Time.com’s visits and page views come from stuff that isn’t in the magazine, and that will continue to be free, so most site visitors may not notice any change at all.

Also worth noting is that while last spring’s Sports Illustrated announcement focused on Time Inc.’s deal to sell magazine subscriptions via Google’s Android platform, today’s news notes that the subscriptions will also work with Apple’s iPad.

That is: Even though Time Inc. isn’t using Apple’s new iTunes subscription service, it’s able to use Apple’s new iTunes subscription terms to deliver iPad subscriptions on its own. Time won’t sell subscriptions to the magazine through iTunes or via the app, but it will encourage readers to head to a Time Inc. Web page to sign up for a bundle. That means the company loses a marketing resource, but retains 100 percent of its subscription revenue, and all of the subscriber information it treasures.

TIME LAUNCHES “ALL ACCESS”
Readers Will Now Pay A One-Time Subscription Fee To Get the Print Edition
Plus Access to Tablet Apps and the New Magazine Channel On TIME.com

(New York, July 19, 2011)—TIME announced today that, starting this week, subscribers
will now pay one price for an “All Access” subscription to TIME magazine content wherever
they want to read it: in print, online and on tablet apps. This subscription model rewards loyal
customers with more choice and quality at no additional cost.

With TIME’s “All Access,” current subscribers to TIME will continue to receive the print
magazine, plus have access to a new paid magazine channel on TIME.com and be able to
download their issues on Apple iPad, HP Touchpad and Samsung Galaxy Tab. The TIME.com
magazine channel will be a paid section of the website that will contain all new magazine
content on an ongoing basis beginning with this week’s issue. Subscribers will activate their “All
Access” accounts using their existing magazine account number or mailing address.

New subscribers will have three options to access TIME magazine content:
1. Subscribe to TIME “All Access” for $30/year and receive 56 print issues, full online
access and all tablet apps
2. Sign up for a 1-week short term pass to access magazine content on TIME.com for $4.99/
week
3. Sign up for a $2.99/month “All Access” subscription. Each month readers get all of the
print editions of TIME, the tablet editions and access to magazine content on TIME.com.
This subscription can be cancelled anytime.

The new magazine channel on TIME.com is one of a series of new content verticals the site
has launched in the past year and a half, including Newsfeed, Swampland, Lightbox, Techland,
Healthland and MoneyLand. TIME.com has 95% original content separate and distinct from
magazine content and has broken multiple traffic records in 2011. In June, the site had 93 million
pages views, up 31% year over year, and 11.3 million unique visitors, up 27% year over year,
according to comScore. TIME is up in ad pages and revenue for the first six months of the year,
up 8.1% in pages and 11.2% in revenue. TIME is the #1 magazine brand on Twitter with more
than 2.6 million followers.

TIME is the second Time Inc. title to launch a subscription plan allowing consumers to pay once
and access their content across multiple platforms. Sports Illustrated announced a similar “All
Access” plan in February 2011.

My informed guess: Next week. Because that’s what Spotify reps have been telling U.S. label executives.

Or maybe later! Spotify is Spotify, so anyone who has paid any attention to this story will be reflexively skeptical that Spotify will show up in the U.S. until Spotify shows up in the U.S. Meanwhile, Spotify PR reps decline to comment.

While the service has agreements in place with three of the four big music labels, it still doesn’t have a signed deal with Warner Music Group, which normally would be a warning flag for this kind of guesstimating. But people I’ve talked to who are familiar with negotiations believe the two companies are close enough that a deal will be inked before the launch.

Meanwhile, if you’re in the U.S. and want to get a sense of what Spotify will look like, go check out Rdio or MOG or Rhapsody or Napster (for now — that last one may not make it much longer). Each one offers a similar service, where $10 a month gets you unlimited, ad-free, on-demand music on your PC or iPhone or Android handset.

The big difference between Spotify and its competitors is that in the past, Spotify has also offered unlimited free music, with ads, on your PC. But over time Spotify has cut back the amount of free music it offers, and now only gives away 10 hours a month in Europe.

It’s possible that some of those terms will change with the U.S. launch, but I’d expect them to stay quite similar. I also wouldn’t expect a grand PR push when Spotify does open up. Then again, they’re going to get plenty of (even more) free press on launch day.

Here’s the old version of the Hulu Plus subscription app for the iPad:

And here’s the new version, built to comply with Apple edicts that kick in at the end of the month:

Easy, right? All Hulu had to do was strip out the link that sent potential subscribers to its Web site, because Apple’s new rule will ban “apps that link to external mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions to be used in the app.”

That means that the app can no longer function as an effective advertising tool for the video service, which is a bummer for Hulu (which is owned by Comcast’s NBC, Disney’s ABC and News Corp.’s Fox; News Corp. also owns this Web site). It’d be quite useful to offer a smattering of free content on the app, then encourage users who want more stuff to click through to Hulu.com to pony up $8 a month.

But that’s much better than the previous choice Apple offered app developers that wanted to sell access to content: Use Apple’s in-house purchase system — and give Apple 30 percent of all sales that flow from that — or don’t do it at all.

Lots of developers have no problem using Apple’s system, which gives them access to a customer base of 225 million people. But others won’t want to give up that much revenue.

So now we’ll see how other content companies that currently use external links in their apps decide to play it over the next couple weeks.

My hunch is that digital video and music companies like Netflix and Rhapsody will follow Hulu’s lead and drop their “buy” buttons. The New York Times has already said it would work with Apple’s rules, but that was back when it announced its paywall/subscription plan in March, when it had a different set of options. I asked Times officials about their plans 10 days ago, and they declined to comment.

Also not commenting: The Wall Street Journal — which again, like this Web site, is owned by News Corp. The Journal hasn’t said a peep about its Apple subscription plans, which seems a bit odd, given that News Corp. and Apple rolled out the first iteration of Apple’s subscription offering, via The Daily, back in February.

Rival business daily the Financial Times, meanwhile, has quite clearly signaled what it plans to do: It has built an HTML5 Web app so it can control every part of the subscription process itself.

Then there’s Amazon, which seems to be one of the clear targets of Apple’s revised rules – note that they specifically rule out the use of a “buy” button that goes to a Web site to purchase a digital book. Hard to believe that Amazon will get rid of its Kindle iOS apps altogether, since they’re a key feature of the Kindle ecosystem. But dropping the app’s “buy” button will be a real drag for the bookseller, too.

The service still doesn’t have a pact signed with Warner Music Group, but people familiar with discussions say the two sides are closer than they have been, and are optimistic a deal will get done.

It’s possible that Spotify could open in the U.S. without Warner, but that would leave holes in the company’s catalog. And that’s a crummy way to introduce a service that CEO Daniel Ek has been promising to bring to the U.S. for two years.

Even if Warner signs next week, though, it will likely take Spotify some time to ramp up a marketing campaign and other elements it would need for a U.S. launch. I wouldn’t count on seeing anything in the States till July at the earliest.

Multiple sources tell me the Universal deal was finished this week. Spotify declined to comment; a spokesman for Universal hasn’t responded to requests for comment. Spotify signed on Sony and EMI Music Group earlier this year.

In Europe, Spotify offers a “freemium” service, where registered users can listen to a certain amount of music each month for free, and paying subscribers get unlimited music, which they can stream to their computers or phones. People familiar with the company’s plans indicate that it wants to do the same thing in the U.S., and would likely charge around $10 a month for the premium service.

Unlike Europe, however, the U.S. has several existing subscription services that also stream unlimited tunes for $10 a month, and those have yet to take off, even though the services are now compatible with popular handsets like Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone.

During the time that Spotify has spent trying to get to the States, meanwhile, three different cloud/locker services have launched in the U.S. as well: Amazon and Google allow users to move their own music to an Internet-based server, where they can stream it to PCs and some phones.

Apple has announced its own take on the concept, which will allow users to download copies of music they own to different devices (it’s possible that version will also allow streaming at some point).

The price point for those services all range from free to a few dollars per month — much cheaper than the $10 per month Spotify will likely ask for. But they’re a different offering: Google, Amazon and Apple are all promising to give you mobile access to music you already own, while subscription services like Spotify give access to millions of tracks you don’t have.